ReeHart – Blogging from the Heart

Posts Tagged ‘video games’

Has the Xbox 360 Impeded You playing Your Top games because of the 3 red light Ring of Death?

3 times in 2 years the Xbox 360 has given me the 3 flashing red light wink of doom. Once was a little over 2 months after the Console was purchased.

But it was somewhat of a relief because the very nice people at the Game store Replaced the console without the need to send it back. Due to the fact that it was covered by the warranty.

However, out of warranty its a right headache.

Microsoft Charge over $100 for the repair. and you will be without your beloved Xbox 360 for 2 weeks or so.

From what I have heard, that when the repair was carried out, the Xbox 360 showed its 3 flashing red light’s again after only a couple of weeks.

So what causes the Hardware failure on the Xbox 360?

The main reason the 3 red light occurs is because of the overall design of the console. Especially in the heat sinks and especially the one for the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit).

The Optical disk drive is above the GPU, and because of this, the heat made by the GPU is far greater than the heat sink can take in order to maintain an optimal temperature throughout the console.

The Elite model of the Xbox 360 has a slightly altered heat sink design of its predecessor. In the Elite model, the liquid cooling is on both CPU and GPU chips. So the Heat is uniform throughout and thus eliminates ‘hot spots’.

In summation, that prolonged exposure to high temperature’s cause the motherboard to warp slightly, which in turn, cracks the lead free solder on the joints of the Xbox 360′s components. this then generate’s a system fault in the form of 3 flashing red lights.

The only free solution was the towel trick, but that can be even more problematic as it makes the warping even worse, and creates irreparable damage to the already weakened solder joints. I unfortunately, experienced this first hand.

As such, the nature of the internet being driven by money, if you wanted good reliable information, your going to have to pay for it. But at least I didn’t have to give any money to Microsoft, Again!

I found 10+ Xbox 360 guides on the web all claiming to get the fix done in 30 minutes, some say 1 hour and others say 2 hours.

Some guides were very good and offered good explanations, but some were shortened versions of the real good guides.

So being a lover of computer games and having an Electronic Engineering degree, I decided to take action and review the top 6 selling guides out there and I narrowed them down to a Top 3.

Click the Link below for my Top 3 repair guides.

The extreme popularity of Wii games has skyrocketed since Nintendo introduced it in 2006. If you’ve been living under a rock, you might not know what Wii is. It’s an interactive video game, which started out with simple things like playing tennis or bowling, and has now branched out to games where you are in a rock band or fighting with a light saber.

Going by reported market numbers, the Nintendo Wii is by now the undisputed kingpin of video gaming, at least in volume. That has translated to greater demand for its media, chiefly the Nintendo Wii Games. The average Wii gamers pay for their games through their noses but the savvy ones dont. Not only that, they even download free wii games over the internet. So, How to Download Wii Games Free?

When conducting a simple search online, there are a wide variety of sites that offer cheap Wii games download and the possibilities of obtaining the games free. However, it is very difficult to decipher as to whether these particular sites are in fact reliable as well as being virus free and providing games that are of quality.

Having that said, a few criteria can sift out the pretenders on How to Download Free Games For Wii. First, it comes with full money-back guarantee. This is important because all top services offer guarantee even though they are rarely utilized. Second, all software and tools are provided without charge. Third, available media include games, movies, TV shows and music. Fourth, support and service is 24/7. Last, it is dealt through an established secure retailer such as Clickbank.

For a one-time up-front fee and no hidden fees like pay-per-download or monthly charges you can now download the latest games and also movies, music and TV shows thus transforming your Wii into a home entertainment system.

Having problems with your Xbox locking up? Are you getting the ring of doom error signal. You now belong to a very large international club of disappointed Xbox owners.

Knowing that many other people share your problem doesn’t help you much, so your Xbox repair options is the topic of this article. In no special order, they are:

1.) You can return your Xbox to Microsoft for a replacement. If your Xbox warranty is still valid, they’ll do this free of charge. Otherwise, they will charge you well over a hundred dollars.

Please note that if for any reason you have opened up your console, your warranty will be voided automatically. It doesn’t matter whether you were trying to fix it yourself or had some other justifiable reason, your warranty will be void.

The Xbox replacement process normally takes a great deal of time. Expect about 2 weeks to be the average replacement time. There’s a specified packing routine that Microsoft wants you to follow when you return your Xbox.

2.) You can try nursing your machine back to good health. If your Xbox hasn’t had many ring of death failures, then maybe there hasn’t been much heat damage. Future problems could be avoided by not allowing your Xbox to get too hot.

Overheating is the main reason for the ring of death. Make sure that the fan vents are open and clear of blockage. Operate the Xbox in a cool and open environment. Restrict playing times to no more than 3 to 4 hours max.

If you’ve been getting a lot of ring of death errors, then a good deal of damage has been done. Avoiding the ring of death may not be possible by keeping your Xbox cool. If there’s been significant heat damage to your machine, the ring of death will occur with greater frequency.

3.) Repair the console yourself. Don’t forget that if you open up your console, the warranty is void. On the other hand, if you don’t have a warranty, then there’s nothing holding you back.

Repair on your Xbox can seem like a complex operation. But if you have the know-how and a few ordinary household tools, it’s fairly easy to do. The Internet has tons of information about how to fix your Xbox both free and paid.

One problem with free info is all of the research that you’ll have to do. The Internet is full of bad advice and sorting through this information will take a lot of time.

There are several paid instructional guides that will give you step by step information on Xbox repair. There ought to be a guarantee that redeems your money if the info doesn’t work. The guarantee is a kind of insurance and thus improves the reliability and quality of the information. The best guides will supply instruction in the form of both video and text downloads.

With a little luck, one of these three options should make sense for your situation and get you back to enjoying your Xbox.